Monitoring the patient’s vital sign is an important task of a Healthcare Professional. This includes Blood Pressure, Respiratory, Cardiac rate as well as Temperature measurement.
One of the most crucial assessments in the Vital Signs is the Blood Pressure (BP) taking. How to calculate blood pressure? Read these tips. Before starting to take any evaluation on the client’s BP, always check if the patient is tired since this may cause errors in the BP results.
Ask him/her if he/she had drunk alcoholic beverages or had smoked several stick of cigarettes since these may not yield accurate results. Locate the pulsing pressure at the patient’s elbow and attach the BP cuff below that. It must not be too tight since it may result to false high readings. Inflate the bulb and add 20-30 mmHg from the patient’s last systolic BP result.
Slowly release the bulb and note for the 1st and last korotkoff sounds. This would determine the systolic and diastolic BP finding.